Monday, February 11, 2013

31 miles to Braddock Community Cafe

02/11/13 #241 31m

A very nice day although windy.

Started at the Bastille, crossed the Ft. Duquesne Bridge, and stopped at the intersection of Blvd of the Allies and Grant Street. Where Grant Street goes uphill and Second Avenue runs underneath it, there has been a mural of various baseball players until it was recently damaged by a car. What I never knew what that there's a Forbes Field replica-wall on the east side of the Blvd of the Allies retaining wall, at 529 Court Place in Pittsburgh.

If I understand things correctly, that's the third Forbes Field replica wall that I'm aware of in Pittsburgh - one in Oakland by the Pitt campus, one on the NorthSide at the baseball stadium, and now one downtown. Is there a limit to how many Forbes Field walls we can have before we start diminishing the brand? Is this confusing to people on the Just Ducky Tours?

Took Forbes Avenue out to Oakland, rode to Squirrel Hill to see a Dino at the Children's Institute, Northumberland and Shady.

Continued to Braddock and Penn, to see the pretty-in-porcine-pink Dollar Bank Dino-Piggy-Bank.

Rode into Braddock proper to check out the Braddock Community Cafe, which is a startup pursuing several goals: (1) providing a place to buy fresh food in Braddock, which doesn't have a restaurant; (2) using local produce and foodstuffs; (3) delivering healthy food rather than fries-and-burgers. This was a great meal stop.

I had a breakfast sandwich which was excellent and a yogurt parfait. For the parfait I expected like a McD frozen ready-made thing, but they took out a bowl and put in fresh local yogurt, my choice of fruit, and granola and it was excellent, much better than I'd have had in almost any other food shop. I'll definitely return there.

Stopped at the Sandcastle-Keystone Metals trail project to take this picture showing the path of the future trail, with the fenceposts for the fence that protects the trail from flying debris from the recycling yard on the right.

Hot Metal Bridge, killer headwind all the way back to the Bastille, 31 miles and 53F at the end of the ride.